'All I did was call him a nerd and he came to kill me'

John Anderson, left, and an image of Russell Tavares that Anderson posted on his website.Photo: AP and John Anderson

July 27, 2007

A US Navy technician who got mad when someone mocked him as a
"nerd" over the internet climbed into his car and drove 2100 km
from Virginia to Texas to teach the other guy a lesson.

As he made his way toward Texas, Fire Controlman 2nd Class Petty
Officer Russell Tavares posted photos online showing the welcome
signs at several states' borders, as if to prove to his internet
friends that he meant business.

When he finally arrived, Tavares burned the man's trailer
down.

This week, Tavares, 27, was sentenced to seven years in prison
after pleading no contest to arson and admitting he set the
blaze.

"I didn't think anybody was stupid enough to try to kill anybody
over an internet fight," said John G. Anderson, 59, who suffered
smoke inhalation while trying to put out the 2005 blaze that caused
$US50,000 in damage to his trailer and computer equipment.

"All I did was call him a nerd and he came to kill me."

The feud started when Anderson, who runs a haunted house near
Waco, joined a picture-sharing website and posted his artwork and
political views. After he blocked some people from his page because
of insults and foul language, they retaliated by making obscene
digitally altered pictures of him, he said.

Anderson, who went by the screen name "Johnny Darkness," traded
barbs with Tavares, aka "PyroDice".

Investigators say Tavares boiled over when Anderson called him a
nerd and posted a digitally altered photo making Tavares look like
a skinny boy in pants too short for his legs, holding a gun and a
laptop under a "Revenge of the Nerds" sign.

Tavares obtained Anderson's real name and hometown from
Anderson's web page about his Museum of Horrors Haunted House.

Tavares took leave from his post as a weapons systems operator
at the AEGIS Training and Readiness centre in Dahlgren, Virginia,
and started driving. Investigators say he told them he planned to
point a shotgun at Anderson and shoot his computer.

Instead, when he got to Elm Mott - after posting one last photo
of a "Welcome to Texas" sign - Tavares threw a piece of
petrol-soaked plastic foam into the back of Anderson's mobile home
and lit a flare, authorities say.

Tavares' attorney, Susan Kelly Johnston, said his trip to the
Waco area was a last-minute decision during a cross-country trip to
visit his parents in Arizona. She said he never intended to hurt
Anderson and did not think he was in the trailer when he set the
fire.

James Pack, an investigator with the Sheriff's Office, caught up
with Tavares after talking to people in several states and in Spain
who had been involved in the online feud. Tavares' mobile phone
records showed he was in the Waco area at the time of the fire,
Pack said.

"He lost everything - all over an internet squabble," the
investigator said.

Tavares was discharged last year from the Navy, where he earned
several medals - including the pistol expert and rifle expert
medals - in his nine-year career, said Navy spokesman Mike
McLellan.

Tavares would not let the feud go even at his sentencing.
According to Pack, Tavares took mobile-phone photos of Anderson in
the courtroom while the judge was hearing another case. Authorities
ordered the photos erased.

Anderson, an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam, said he continues
to be harassed online, has been startled by people knocking on his
window late at night and found bullet holes in a door to his
business.

He said he is convinced the harassment is related to the
internet feud and plans to spend $US30,000 on more fencing topped
with barbed wire.

"Before this happened, the rule was: Nobody messes with the
haunted house guy," Anderson said.

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John Anderson, left, and an image of Russell Tavares that Anderson posted on his website.

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